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Is this counterfit?

I

iMacZealot

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 11, 2005
2,237
3
I sold a bunch of old cell phones to a phone store in my local area just to get them out of my hair. They gave me $15 for them--- $5 each. Two of the bills are the old style and look genuine. The other one is the new design with the purple and pink which came out this year. What throws me off is the feel--- it's a little too crisp and not quite as fabric feeling--- and that it says it's series 2006. The rest of the bill (holograms, microprinting, etc.) look genuine.

The place I got them from didn't seem too sketchy, though they may do business with the sketchier phone places in the outskirts of town. I wouldn't be in such a fuss unless if I hadn't noticed on the way home that it says series 2006 and not 2008 and that it has a weird feel.

Am I fussing over nothing?
 
Okay, I can accept that a new bill will feel different, but if this new designjust entered circulation two months ago and wasn't announced until this fall, why is the series year 2006?
 
I don't think fivers are commonly counterfeited. You can usually spot them though if you give it a good look over. (the holograms, the ghosted images, etc) but taking it to a bank is a sure way to find out.
 
According to people who claim to know about these things, the time and money required to create a really good plate for faking USD currency is astronomically high, and then you've got to get the right synthetic fibers, and then...well it's darn complicated, and would cost well over 5 bucks each for the first, say, couple hundred thousand bills, making fivers a waste of time even if you had infinite amounts of materials. Unless of course someone would do it just to be anarchical, which is always possible:cool:.

In terms of good old fashioned crime-for-money, that's the catch-22 of counterfeiting: to do it right costs so much you can only do 50s and 100s, and those are the bills that get the most attention at the bank. It's amazing that anyone even tries...but people still rob banks too, so go figure. Even in high denominations, according to this source, only 1-2 out of 10,000 bills are likely to be fakes:

http://cryptome.org/usd-fake.htm

Still, why not check it out and report back to us? All you've got to lose is 5 bucks, and it would be a cool story to tell if it really is fake.

PS something else that article says which surprised me: USD notes are no more likely to be fake abroad, even in distant lands, than they are in the US or on western Europe.

Maybe that was Saddam's REAL WMD :eek:.
 
you took it without any problems or questions. If your worried, go buy something with it and get some change back. Theres a good chance they won't say much about it either. People don't usually look very close at the money they are given, they just see the color, and a number for the most part. it's kind of like your laundering the money, hah.
 
2006 is the newest series of bills. Rub your fingernail on the printing right below Abe's neck. You should be able to feel the ridges and valleys in the crosshatching, which is a trademark of the intaligo printing method the Bureau of Engraving and Printing uses. Also, if you hold one end in each hand and pull it taut a few times I'm sure it will sound and feel like any other bill. To echo other posts, I highly doubt it's a fake.
 
shikimo said:
According to people who claim to know about these things, the time and money required to create a really good plate for faking USD currency is astronomically high, and then you've got to get the right synthetic fibers, and then...well it's darn complicated, and would cost well over 5 bucks each for the first, say, couple hundred thousand bills, making fivers a waste of time even if you had infinite amounts of materials. Unless of course someone would do it just to be anarchical, which is always possible:cool:.
Click to expand...

While the new bills change the landscape some, it's been all about the paper for quite some time (photo etching is relatively easy, plates are more a matter of know-how than anything.) When I used to hang out in holding rooms with bored USSS agents, they'd describe the types of papers that worked best and all that. The plate issue has always been that it's not easy to change the serial number, so you end up with a bunch of bills with the exact same S/N, making disribution more difficult.

Now-a-days of course, you can simply scan and print, which is why the USSS had everyone put microdots in their printers and has them futz with green.
 
They printed the bills in 2006, just didn't release them til now. There will be bills in the future that are 08's and probably look completely different, just they didn't tell us about them yet. Thats the government for ya.
 
^^^
Fair enough.

I must say that I do like all this color coming to our currency. It makes our dead presidents look more attractive and interesting. I'd like to see the $1 bill redone, though from what I've read in the last few days, that isn't going to happen.
 
iMacZealot said:
^^^
Fair enough.

I must say that I do like all this color coming to our currency. It makes our dead presidents look more attractive and interesting. I'd like to see the $1 bill redone, though from what I've read in the last few days, that isn't going to happen.
Click to expand...

Nope - there's no real practical reason to. Singles really don'tget counterfeited.

I don't mind the color, but I hate the fiver with a vigourous burning passion. I can understand the reason why the big purple 5 is there, but come on - they slapped a huge, modern-looking five right there in the corner of a traditional-style bill. It's not pretty.
 
d_and_n5000 said:
Nope - there's no real practical reason to. Singles really don'tget counterfeited.

I don't mind the color, but I hate the fiver with a vigourous burning passion. I can understand the reason why the big purple 5 is there, but come on - they slapped a huge, modern-looking five right there in the corner of a traditional-style bill. It's not pretty.
Click to expand...

The new style uses the same font for that lower-right 5 as the old one, only it's larger and purple. I don't mind it.

I'd like to see $2 bills go into production and consumption more frequently-- the $1 bill is hardly worth anything now.
 
Our money is starting to look more and more canadian :) lol. I work in retail and also noticed that the new fives I kept getting said 2006 on them when I just started seeing them in circulation recently. No biggie
 
[off topic]

This thread made me go and look at the current (and newly designed) US Currency, and tbh i think Australia's notes are actually quite nicer. This isn't being biased, i looked at both side by side.. and yea.
What do you think?
Aus Notes
 
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